For The Love Of Family

Nancy’s new job at the manor was a big step away from the fishing village where she’d grown up...

NANCY stopped under cover of the line of trees to smooth her skirt and tidy her hair, all the while gazing up at the red brick building which now filled her view.

She'd paused many times on her way across the fields to wonder at it, but Wittleton Manor became all the more impressive the closer you drew.

Such enormous windows, and so many of them.

Imagine living in all that light; how easy it must be to do your sewing.

How fine to be able to read a book without poring over it and straining your eyes in the half dark.

And they must have dozens of books, too.

A whole library. Not just the couple she'd won as prizes from Sunday school.

Several tall chimneys meant a lot of fireplaces to be cleaned and swept.

Every silver lining had its cloud.

"Come along, Nancy." She spoke out loud. "They'll not come out here and offer you a job." With that, she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders and marched to the rear of the building.

"I've come about the job of housemaid," she said to the young girl she found in the yard outside the kitchen door.

She was a skinny, freckled thing and couldn't have been more than about eleven years old.

She was busy pegging out tea towels and cleaning cloths on a small washing line.

Her hands were red raw - probably from too much time spent in buckets of soapy water.

"Mrs Harper. There's a girl here about the job!"

A wide woman in a starched apron came to the door in a cloud of flour and frowned at the girl.

"Well, don't stand there hollering about it - you'll wake Master Lawrence and then where will we be?"

The girl shrank slightly from the rebuke.

"Bring her in. Lizzie can fetch her up to Mrs Taylor when she's ready."

Cook went back to her work and Nancy gave the young girl a friendly smile.